1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to pick-up trucks, and more specifically to the provision of an auxiliary closable compartment separate from the normal cab and load box portions of a pick-up truck.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the construction pick-up trucks, it is known to provide enclosed storage areas beyond that normally associated with the driver's cab portion of the truck. One example of such a storage area provision is that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,430 to Lawrence, which discloses a conversion design for an extended cab pick-up that provides a storage area behind the seating positions provided for driver and passengers with accessibility to the storage area being providing through an opening in the side wall of the portion of the pick-up truck cab longitudinally rearwardly spaced from the side door of the cab. In instances where the cab is configured to have the extended space behind the normal cab position, this provides an externally accessible storage space, but its utility is dependent upon the selection of the truck construction that includes the extended portion of the truck cab rearwardly arranged behind the normal cab enclosure. The stringent design considerations put upon the design of the overall truck cab construction itself can result in an inefficient layout of space, weight and expense for providing the auxiliary storage function.
In providing storage space within the load box of a pick-up truck, it is well known to provide drop-in container such as tool or utility boxes arranged to be received within the confines of the load box itself typically at the forward end of the box. Those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,011 to Grossman, U.S. Pat. No. 4,770,330 to Bonstead et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,488,669 to Waters and U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,624 to West are exemplary of such constructions. Use of such containers generally necessitates the modification of the load box itself to securely fasten the container within the box, which was not designed to accept such a container, and all suffer from the disadvantage that they neither aesthetically, nor structurally, are integrated with the design of the pick-up truck itself.